Google bought wireless-communications startup Alpental Technologies in its bid to extend fast Internet service to more places.

Google acquired Alpental a few weeks ago, but did not announce the deal at the time. A Google spokesman confirmed the acquisition on Thursday but declined to say why the company made the purchase or comment further.

Alpental’s technology is Google’s latest effort to extend Internet service to areas of the globe not yet connected. Google also has connectivity projects involving balloons, drones and satellites.

Alpental was started by former Clearwire engineers including Michael Hart and Pete Gelbman. The company was developing a cheap, high-speed communications service using the 60GHz band of spectrum, according to a letter the Alpental engineers wrote to the Federal Communications Commission last year.

The 60GHz band has been used for high-capacity networking indoors and to extend fiber-optic Internet service from one commercial building to others nearby. The FCC loosened some rules governing this band of spectrum last year, saying that it could be used to provide wireless connections of up to a mile at speeds up to seven gigabits per second.

That could extend service without the cost of building new wireline networks in some areas, the FCC said in August. Most broadband Internet services offer much slower speeds, below one gigabit per second.

On his LinkedIn profile, Gelbman described Alpental’s product as a “self-organizing, ultra-low power Gigabit wireless technology” that extends the reach of fiber-optic networks. It was designed for dense urban areas and to work with next-generation 5G wireless networks and Wi-Fi, he wrote.

Gelbman and Hart joined Google in May, according to their LinkedIn profiles. The engineers did not say on their profiles what they will be doing at Google.

Google has built a fast Fiber Internet service in Kansas City and is bringing the same service to Austin, Tex. and Provo, Utah. The company is considering Google Fiber in 34 other areas, and said in April that it wants to add Wi-Fi to extend the range of its Google Fiber services.